That CARICOM support, which will lend further legitimacy to the Aristide government amid seething discontent among the staggeringly poor and powerless, and with a uniquely united opposition front on the offensive, comes within the next two weeks.

It will be CARICOM's mission to Haiti, led by Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo in his capacity as Chairman of the Community, and to include either the Prime Minister of St. Lucia, Kenny Anthony, or his Foreign Minister Julian Hunte, as well as Secretary General Edwin Carrington.

Officially, the mission is in keeping with a decision of the CARICOM Summit in Georgetown in July this year to mark Haiti's accession to the 15-member CARICOM.

Any such mission at this time would, of course, be expected to take into consideration also legitimate demands of the "Convergence Democratique", a 15-member combination of opposition parties under the leadership of Evans Paul.

He was himself once a staunch supporter of Aristide, the former Roman Catholic priest turned politician and now being accused by fierce opponents of running a "corrupt dictatorship".

Such an accusation would seem bizarre for a former "people's priest", who had courageously braved the terrorism of the 'Duvalierist dictatorship', with all its chilling stories of murder, torture and mayhem amid spreading, chronic poverty of the masses of Haiti's estimated seven million people.

Now, accusations ranging from gross human rights abuses and the undermining of a fledgling multi-party parliamentary democracy to assassinations of journalists and other dissidents are, distressingly, being regularly hurled at the governing 'Fanmi Lavalas' party of Aristide.

Having suffered a coup one year after becoming the first democratically elected President of Haiti in 1990, Aristide was restored to office by a United States military intervention with Bill Clinton in the White House. George Bush's administration does not reflect an anxiety to help Haiti, which continues to be starved for development aid.

With the assassination last year of the Haitian journalist Brignol Lindor that followed the even more sensational murder of Haiti's best known journalist at home and abroad, Jean Dominique, I recalled intervening, on behalf of a group of regional journalists with Haiti's Foreign Minister Joseph Felipe in pleading the cause of journalist colleagues in that Caribbean state.

The Foreign Minister, who was then attending the annual General Assembly of the OAS in Barbados, promised to investigate the allegations of harassment and worse on his return home. But reports out of Port-au-Prince continue to point to the perils facing dissenting journalists and human rights advocates in Haiti.